The IDP Immunology Program at Stanford seeks to provide the best training program possible for our pre- and postdoctoral trainees. The Program is interdepartmental in organization, with 55 faculty from 13 departments and 4 divisions (in the Department of Medicine), and in the Schools of Medicine and Humanities and Sciences. The research and training activities in this training grant benefit from a multi-disciplinary approach and our tradition of interactions and collaborations among the labs. Our training grant gives our program faculty, particularly those in non-degree granting departments, the opportunity to recruit first-rate graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. Predoctoral trainees will, in a typical five year training plan, 1) acquire a fundamental, broad, and comprehensive body of knowledge and skills through an extensive curriculum. 2) learn to identify important scientific questions and design experiments that address these questions using the most appropriate methods; 3) read and critically analyze current primary literature in the field of immunology and other fields relevant to their research focus; 4) organize and present research seminars that communicate ideas and results effectively to a variety of audiences; 5) organize and write manuscripts that will be published in the leading journals; 6) teach effectively in small and large contexts, either alone or as part of a team of teachers. Postdoctoral trainees will develop an individual training plan that identifies both scientific career objectives and professional development needs, and is based on the mutual interests of the mentor and the postdoctoral trainee. The postdoctoral trainee will learn to become an independent scientist and broaden their academic pursuits, as well as to learn how to write grants and obtain individual research funding. Postdoctoral trainees learn more extensive professional skills, e.g., lab management, mentoring, time management, which will allow them to compete successfully in today's challenging market. Both predoctoral and postdoctoral trainees are expected to participate in programmatic activities such as the Immunology Program's annual Immunology scientific conference, seminar series, journal clubs, the Postdoc Symposium, and to present their research in local and national conferences. RELEVANCE: The training program will enable our trainees to deal more confidently with the challenges of intellectual work either in academia or biotechnology. But more importantly, our trainees will gain a perspective on how a scientific discipline such as immunology operates academically, socially, and politically, and they will acquire a sense of scholarly citizenship by grasping their role in a larger educational enterprise.